Are you a leader? Do you aspire to be a trusted and respected professional? Do you want to overcome the uncertainty in your leadership role? This book can be your guide, offering practical advice and insights to help you navigate leadership challenges and earn the respect you deserve.
Want to read further…
Here are several minutes of wisdom in this direction.
Nowadays, leaders struggle with numerous challenges: overwhelming work, creating a safe and open environment, and ultimately, earning the respect they need and deserve from others. People don’t trust each other. According to widely distributed research on leadership and trust, more than 55% of people trust individuals they don’t know more than the leaders of the organization where they work.
The struggle continues when leaders understand that, due to a lack of trust, people are less engaged in the company agenda.
And here is where the coaching guild comes to offer a solution. Often seen as a coaching program – sold as an individual approach and even a unique proposal- they aim to help leaders learn how to be better leaders for others and themselves. As a fast solution, coaching is old on every level and in different areas – work, personal life, problem-solving, etc. But before a leader or someone else directs themselves toward the coaching, they may need to evaluate their current state. Here are several habits that may be explored for a leader to see where they stand
Managing energy, not time
Managers manage time. They need to see people present at their workplace. When managing people, the essential element is managing the whole amount of time, hoping to get productivity and efficiency while people are around you. It is what makes a good manager. Controlling mechanisms are part of the arsenal of a good manager. On the other side, leaders have different tasks and agendas. They don’t see managing as a process of controlling different steps; they see it as an opportunity to sustain energy in the team at levels where efficiency and productivity will be at a peak point. With no intention to break everyone’s individuality, the best habit a leader can approach is to focus on recognizing and involving energy in reaching maximized goals.
Simplify problems and challenges
People often tend to overreact and focus on creating complexity for everything that is happening around them. According to an HBR productivity research from 2023, some forty-nine percent of the respondents directly say that the environment around them is getting more complex. With that increasing complexity, tension, stress, and negativity also grow. As a result, exhaustion pops up in people. A good habit a leader can adopt is to learn how to simplify things and make complexity look more acceptable and not scary. The more focused the leader acts in this direction, the wider the impact of exhausting and challenging situations grows in a positive direction. With the thought of simplification, leaders can achieve more than with many other tools for management and control.
Make decisions based on principles
Now, principles drive our lives. No matter if we see or understand them, they are there. The way we behave is a principal understanding of how we see things. Organizational consultants call these principles values. If someone acts just for the sake of the decision and does not follow principles, they often feel uncomfortable. But not every principle is the same. Some of them may be obvious, while others may look odd. For the leader to act, they need to follow a principal agenda
Build relationships with intent
There are many reasons why we establish connections in our lives. Some of them are to give us space; others ensure security and accountability, etc. The main thing about building connections is doing that intentionally
Respected leaders don’t just speak but act. They threaten everyone the same way and with respect. Nothing from what they do is meant to harm others, but to elevate them through a meaningful relationship. It is why respected leaders don’t move forward with the intent to lead and push, but to build wealth. In this direction, what they do is to find the reason and the backbone of the connections they create. Building connections for the sake of building or to collect numbers is not on their agenda. Intentional connection-building is at the heart of how and why they do it. Every time a respected leader extends their circle of connections, it adds value for themselves and their circle of existing connections.
Re-evaluate the circle of connections regularly
Respected leaders know the importance of having the right set of connections. Having less is insufficient, and having more is just a waste of time. They keep the perfect balance by evaluating the weight of every connection and comparing it to how it serves as support and a booster to everyone’s growth. With that thought in mind, re-evaluating seems like a reasonable condition and action for them. What is good for them and others around them is valuable; what is not, just let them be left behind. It is that simple. A respected leader knows that if something is not usable and helpful, it often turns into a toxic weight that has to be carried. And that does not help anyone.
For example, look at your circle of relationships. You may see as many as 200 of them expecting your attention. But is it possible and worth it to give your attention to everyone? Probably not. It is also strange to just ghost people because you cannot provide meaningful and purposeful relationships. Instead of building them, you create negativity because of your inability to be there for all those expecting you to be there. And what can you do about that?
Find that in the next habit…
Create streams for followers that enrich both sides
This habit is one of the hardest to build, but respected leaders know what to do and how to do it. To make the habit, they practice the skill of delegating connections. While humans try to keep everything close to themselves, respected leaders do what is needed to let go. There is no meaning in keeping a relationship that you cannot maintain and building on its negative side. Instead, learning to pass those connections that are not close to you to people in your circle positively affects the connection itself and the person you delegate it to. Learning to let go at the right moment and in the right amount is a sign of growth. At the same time, the benefits of the action positively impact the respected leader. Being open-minded about what to give and keep creates gratitude, honesty, and attachment to that leader for those who have been connected to them and benefit from that relationship. The more the leader pushes that habit, the higher the respect toward them over time.
Build a high level of self-awareness
It is easy for people to lose their path and turn in a negative direction instead of following the right path to success. Some call this easy, and others see it as a shortcut to success, but experience shows that there is no shortcut to what you need when you aim to become great. Respected leaders are no exception. What may look great and cool from the outside may be weak and sick from the inside. That is why the most powerful habit of becoming respected is to know where you stand. And here, it is not about social or economic status but how you accept yourself and what you do to become a better version of what you see today. It is a lesson respected leaders learn daily, chapter by chapter, situation by situation, etc. The more leaders know of themselves and the more they share with others, the more likely they are to become respected. Because people want to see people in front of them. The strong leader who is crushed by a personal event or is suffering a loss, struggling with health, and asking for help is the one who wins people’s hearts. When starting to learn about themselves, leaders are often afraid of not being seen as weak. However, with the growth in their path, they have to understand that what builds respect is an image of an individual who is not afraid to roar, “I am a living person and not a robotized humanoid.” The deeper that habit builds, the more self-aware the leader becomes, and the more powerful their reactions, actions, and impact build toward other people around them and their surroundings as a whole.
IN THE END:
Respected leaders often experience different paths of transformation and growth. Building and sustaining the habits to evaluate the environment and build on that evaluation by showing the world their humanistic side is the winning strike for sustaining gratitude, honest followership, and respect. Now ask yourself: “Where are you standing with your habits ?” But be careful because the truthful answer may surprise you.
The Human place - a path from you to yourself 